Tensions sizzle alongside burgers in the hazy timelines and brisk prose of the French writer’s disorienting debut

In recent novels set in restaurants, the breakneck speed of the action hides darker elements at work. Stéphane Larue’s The Dishwasher follows a restaurant worker whose life threatens to unravel amid his gambling addiction; in Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back , the world of waitressing is a front for Texas’s grimy underbelly. Beneath the surface frenzy of French writer Claire Baglin’s debut novel, On the Clock (translated by Jordan Stump), there is a similar stream of existential angst, its protagonist “mired in the heart of pointlessness”.

Baglin’s focus is intergenerational exploitation in the (French) workplace. She gives an impressionistic portrait of a young woman employed at a burger joint in brisk but unsparing prose, alternating between her unnamed narrator’s customer-facing drudgery – unfriendly co-workers, pestering managers, habitual injuries – and her childhood memories, particularly of her hot-tempered father, Jérôme, who toiled in a factory for 20 years.

On the Clock by Claire Baglin (translated by Jordan Stump) is published by Daunt (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

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Arts teacher and photographer Hicham Benohoud encouraged students to engage playfully with identity in postcolonial Morocco, for a project called The Classroom

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Behind many symbols of quintessentially British culture – from Picture Post to Pevsner’s guides – were refugees who fled Europe in the 1930s and 40s

In the early 1940s, the publisher Collins launched a series of books called Britain in Pictures – “bright, slim volumes”, as Owen Hatherley calls them, on such quintessential national subjects as cricket, inns, “English clocks” and “British explorers”, written by the likes of John Betjeman, Edith Sitwell and George Orwell. It’s hard to imagine a more patriotic project (“a paroxysm of island backslapping”, Hatherley says) except that, “at every level except for the texts”, this was “an entirely central European endeavour”.

Its mostly female staff of designers, editors, typographers and publishers was made up of recent refugees from countries that had succumbed to fascism, many of whom had to be released from internment on the Isle of Man in order to work on the books. Adprint, the company that produced and packaged Britain in Pictures , was the creation of the Viennese-born publishers Wolfgang Foges and Walter Neurath. The latter, with his wife Eva, would go on to found Thames & Hudson.

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The Change is funnier than ever, as Linda continues her journey of self-discovery. Plus: the gripping finale of Sky’s Mussolini drama. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, Channel 4

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The artist, who has an exhibition at Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery, created a unique body of work from jail uniforms, soap and lids while detained by Myanmar’s regime

The Burmese painter Htein Lin’s art bears the imprint of his years in a Myanmar jail, where he created hundreds of paintings using prison uniforms as his canvases and makeshift tools including syringes, soap blocks and cigarette lighters.

“I had no canvas, no brushes, no paint. But I had to make art,” says Htein Lin from his home in Myanmar’s Shan state. “I befriended the prison guards to smuggle in paint, scavenging for materials wherever I could.

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Comedian, broadcaster and podcaster Suzi Ruffell joins Grace in her east London home. Suzi’s comedy CV boasts an impressive five sellout runs at the Edinburgh festival fringe, appearances on Live at the Apollo, Mock the Week and The Last Leg. She talks to Grace about family life with her wife, Alice, in Brighton; her struggles with anxiety; her mum’s sandwich love language; and the moment her dad paid her £15 to eat a spoonful of mustard powder

New episodes of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent will be released every Tuesday

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More than 800 objects unearthed near Melsonby show the north was ‘definitely not a backwater’ 2,000 years ago

One of the biggest and most important iron age hoards ever found in the UK has been revealed, potentially altering our understanding of life in Britain 2,000 years ago.

More than 800 objects were unearthed in a field near the village of Melsonby, North Yorkshire. They date back to the first century, around the time of the Roman conquest of Britain under Emperor Claudius, and are almost certainly associated with a tribe called the Brigantes who controlled most of northern England.

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The latest episode of the luxury resort drama is far from the first time that TV has shown troublingly intimate moments between family members. Why is it such an effective shock tactic?

Warning: the below article contains spoilers for episode six, season three of The White Lotus.

Talk about a hangover from hell. In the latest episode of The White Lotus, Saxon Ratliff woke up dazed and dishevelled from the previous night’s Full Moon party. It had been a long, messy day-and-night of booze, edibles, “lasers and shitty music”. Oh, and being pleasured by his own brother.

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For most of us, lockdown was like a bad dream. But this extraordinary film meets the people still riddled with guilt and heartbreak – and paints beautiful portraits of those they lost

“Remember the pandemic?” In 2025, it’s something you might say after spotting a person wearing a face mask on the street, or being temporarily stunned by the sudden recollection of the 2-metre rule, or people hosing down their weekly shop. Of course, few adults will have forgotten about a global pandemic that officially ended only two years ago – not least because, for many, Covid-19 infections still cause significant health issues. But, generally speaking, the world has moved on, and you can see why it might seem that the nation is experiencing collective amnesia about an event that resulted in the highest death toll since the second world war.

For some, this feels like a betrayal. Families who lost loved ones to the virus are not just incapable of putting the pandemic out of their minds, they are determined not to. As Covid fades from our lives and our lexicon, they worry that the victims are at risk of being forgotten too.

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